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Writer's picturejkdorfield

To my Neighbors in Loss post-Helene, with Love

Updated: Oct 28

Neighbors who’ve lost so much to Helene, you are in my heart and prayers.


I don’t know how it is to watch your three-generation home, all you own, or your loved ones slip down and away in a mudslide or into a river. 


I don’t know how it is to see your home broken open by a fallen tree or gouged out by flood waters.


I don’t know how it is to hear tree trunks cracking and crashing all around you, or the chug of a freight train when tornados (or hurricanes) aren't supposed to happen in the mountains, to manically run to save family or animals entrusted to your care, to gamble with staying put or fleeing, to be realizing the car isn’t going to make the rising tides so risking pushing out into the raging current. 


I don’t know what it’s like to take in the reality that despite living 25 feet above the floodplain there’s brown water rising above the panes of your ground floor windows and surging into your home as you’re wagering between what you can still salvage and if you can still live.


After surviving it, I don’t know what it’s like to be told now you have to go anyway, the ATV is here, the roads are impassable, and it’s a cot in a fluorescently-lit elementary school gymnasium, a stranger a snore’s breath away, where you’ll be taken, unsure of if or when you'll return.


I don’t know how it is, making it through, only to witness your business—your livelihood, years of investment, purpose in the world—bathed in feet of sewage-scented muck, the dumpster plowed through the back end, the building’s contents spilled into the parking lot like a ruptured abdomen, and—insult to injury—looters already scavenging and insurance companies declaring they don’t cover “acts of God.”



I don’t know what any of this is like because it wasn’t my turn for profound loss, this time.


My turn had recently come and gone…and will return again one day. 


But because of it—even thanks to it—I believe I do know a few things, which I hold out to you now, like an open hand.



I know the paralyzing shock of unbelievable loss and new reality.


I know how it is to feel our chest like a house plant whose rootball has been yanked out and left behind a gaping hollow.


I know what it’s like waking with a start, when we’ve been lucky enough to sleep, when our body remembers what happened at this same time yesterday, last week, last month, even when our mind doesn’t . 


I know the mania of all there can be to get done after tragedy, and how some of us remain in high agitation—and others of us in dulled depression—a long time after.


I know how it is to need to scream and wail: alone in the car, pounding the steering wheel, or into our pillow, pummeling the mattress, even into the Earth, our belly pressed against hers.


I know the incredulity, awe, and audacity at how other’s lives and the world continue on when it seems all ought come to a crashing halt, as it has for us.


I know the wonder of all the helpers who arrive, and in many different ways, and of the ones we bravely seek, and how this can renew our faith in life.


I also know the confusion of those eager to help sometimes not yet having the skillfulness to know how to be with us after, even some we’d most counted on to, since no one teaches us this anymore, so feeling as if we’re standing on opposite sides of a great, flooded chasm.


I know the double-edged sword of bright siding, with well-intentioned others and our own internalized bypass, reminding us how blessed and lucky we are, what all we still have, that we’ve got to stay strong, which may only be half of what’s before us.


I know the temptation to compare tragedies, who wins with it worse, instead of just letting loss and 

grief be our ultimate connectors to one other.


I know how it is to have something we've held sacred be what breaks our trust and brings tragedy.


I know how it is to realize this experience may either make or break us, or maybe both. 



Because of my own loss, I can reach out my arms to you now and say, Welcome, Welcome! if you hadn’t before had a turn at profound loss (or at least not quite this profound). 


I can say, I hope you have the courage and resilience to feel the grief and pain, bits at a time, the whole way through, to let your heart break open, and maybe even stay that way.


I can say, I hope you find one day that this loss, as I heard someone say, is what helps you feel you really belong to humanity now.

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1 comentario


Kathi Shuford
Kathi Shuford
4 days ago

Wow Jennifer! An amazing essay/ letter, thank you for having the brilliance to write and the strength to share

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